


To Build His House

by anthrop



Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [6]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, because clearly i had to thank the person who got me into FMA, by dismembering a fictional teenager even more, fan continuation of another fanfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:48:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27202039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anthrop/pseuds/anthrop
Summary: He shrugs, sheepish. He’s only got the one shoulder, the left port empty and stiff. Funny. Winry can’t find the beauty in the easy motion of his automail. It’s been four months since he came back home with the wrong arm missing, and the absence on his left side still makes her breath catch. “What’s a limb to a life?”Granny all but snarls at him.“Idiot boy!You’ve only got the one left!”
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric
Series: Good Intentions Deadfic Extravaganza [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1983268
Comments: 12
Kudos: 74
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	To Build His House

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Phantomrose96](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantomrose96/gifts).



> Once upon a time in 2017 I was in dire need of a new media to fixate on as a distraction from some fairly shitty real life things that were going on. I ended up reading all of Phantomrose96's FMA fics on her [tumblr](https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/fanfiction.tags), then ended up finally watching BH, and finally went off the deep end entirely. As a sort of thanks I was going to write a continuation of my favorite of her fics, [Giving Tree](https://phantomrose96.tumblr.com/post/143778896242/giving-tree), and managed to get a decent bit done before I, as always, magpie'd off to other things. I still quite like the amount I did manage to write, so now that the Good Intentions WIP Fest has given me the excuse to throw yet more deadfic out into the world, here we are! 
> 
> (It will definitely help if you go read her fic first.)

_'“Can you give me a house?"_   
_"I have no house," said the tree. "The forest is my house, but you may cut off my branches and build a house. Then you will be happy."_   
_And so the boy cut off her branches and carried them away to build his house. And the tree was happy.' - The Giving Tree, Shel Silverstein_

* * *

White. That’s all he sees at first. A white canvas, stretching on in every direction, as pure and unmarred as a freshly fallen snow. His eyes sting. He squints, disoriented and off-kilter; his mind’s a haze he can’t think clearly through. He can’t remember what he’d been doing before—

Wait.

His eyes _sting_.

“Oh no,” he breathes, and he’s _breathing_ , exhaling out his dismay. His lungs deflate, his vocal chords hum, his throat rasps and his mouth’s as dry as sand. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth, swollen and pinched between his teeth. His chapped lips part reluctantly, catching on his teeth, peeling apart like a wound.

He’s in his body again, and it’s all he can do to keep breathing.

_[[Welcome back.]]_

He hears many voices speaking as one, a crowd perfectly in sync; young and old, masculine and feminine and a childlike singsong spun through. He can hear his brother’s voice loudest of all, speaking confidently, speaking with that ear-to-ear grin he reserves for fights he knows he’s already won. It seems to come from nowhere, or perhaps it’s only that he’s still struggling to see with his own eyes. He can see Edward’s Gate, of course; it’d be hard to miss the towering stone slab suspended on nothing, an intricate design upon the doors that seems both ancient and freshly carved. There are words, he knows, but he— _his body, his body, his body_ —is sitting too far away to make any of them out.

And sitting opposite him is God.

Before East City, before his armor fractured and his blood seal splintered, before he woke up in this white void between two stone slabs face to face with this same thing, he never understood what Edward had meant when he’d mention any of this. It was an accident usually, a slip of the tongue that made Edward go still and look up at him out of the corner of his eye, as if he expected him to remember. He never did, but he’d pressed Edward to explain, once or twice. Edward’s voice always hushed a little, as respectful as he was fearful, as scared of the thing he called Truth as he was angry at it for taking so much from them. Edward always broke off before he ever said much, brushed it aside like it didn’t give him nightmares that he had to be gently shaken out of more nights than not.

After East City, he understands now why Edward calls it Truth instead of God. He doesn’t feel the same need to make a distinction between what’s sitting here and what people think is waiting for them when they die. It doesn’t scare him, like it scares Edward, and it isn’t bravery that makes him think this way. He thinks of God like a gemstone; faceted, blinding and plain in turns. The God sitting opposite him isn’t the one that took his body— or, it is, but it’s only one part of the greater whole. It is all and it is one, and it’s also so much more than that.

God has three of Edward’s limbs now.

“What happened?” He asks. It doesn’t hurt to talk, but his body is out of practice.

_[[Don’t you remember? Think carefully.]]_

It smiles at him fondly, a suggestion of teeth in an otherwise absent face. It had smiled the first time he’d passed through the Gate too, on that terrible night. He remembers it so clearly now; reaching into the light for the shape of his mother, only to be grabbed by his own hand. God had unraveled him that night, grinned with his stolen face before casting his soul into the twisted, broken thing they’d made. He shudders, the sensation of hot blood pooling in his throat as fresh as when it had happened. He licks his teeth, looking down at his pale, too-thin hands. His long hair tickles his spine and falls into his eyes, obscuring God briefly. His fingernails are too long too, but not as long he’d think they’d be, considering he hasn’t clipped them in years. They look torn, ragged. What does God do with his body when he isn’t in it?

He shakes his head. No, that isn’t what he needs to be thinking about right now. Where had he been before this? What had he been doing? 

Resembol. They’d been in Resembol. Brother was recovering from his surgery, only just beginning his rehabilitation. The bandages had only come off last week, and his left shoulder still looked more like raw meat than scar tissue. It would be another month before Granny and Winry could put the protective plating on. His third automail limb, a steel port cupping his scapula, support struts clamped to his ribs, his remaining nerves threaded into a half dozen sockets for the control wiring to connect to.

God tilts Its head, watching him intently. It doesn’t have eyes that he can see, but he can feel Its gaze like a physical weight, cold and alien, like a bird watching a worm wriggling across the dirt. It sits loosely, in a comfortable sprawl. Edward’s arms are in Its lap, and Edward’s leg is curled neatly under It. His face twists, the guilt natural but the feel of muscle and skin reacting to his emotions almost as alien as the thing watching him. Brother should hate him. His weakness the night they tried to bring Mom back cost Edward his right arm, and the left now as well. Brother should want nothing to do with him, should want to leave him in this place to wither.

But Edward, impossibly, doesn’t seem to resent him at all. Edward just smiles at him, even through the pain, trying to reassure him. _Sorry about the setback, Al. We’ll get back on track as soon as possible, okay?_ Like it was Ed’s fault he’d lost— traded— his arm. He hasn’t heard Ed complain once, not once, since they’ve been in Resembol, even with the winter cold and the spring thaw snapping at his old stumps, even with through the worst of the outfitting process, even with—

The spring thaw.

_[[Ah, is it coming back to you now?]]_

“Yes,” he says automatically. The spring thaw. He remembers now, and how could he have forgotten? That had been the closest Brother has come to being angry with him since they’d returned to Resembol, shouting himself flushed and sweating, demanding that he not go out there. But the thaws and the spring storms are always difficult this high up in the mountain. The river flooded every year, a [unfinished]

* * *

Winry doesn’t know what to do.

“It’ll be fine,” Ed says. “I can handle it.”

“Leave it to the search team,” Granny chastises. “They’ll bring him home just fine without any help from you.”

“Al fell in the river. He’s too big to fish out without alchemy, and I can’t do alchemy one-handed.”

Granny’s face hardens. “You’re in no condition to go traipsing around in a storm, Ed.”

“I’m the only one who can save him. There’s no other options—”

“There are plenty of good folk out there happy to help you boys if you’d just give them half a chance, and none of _them_ are recovering from surgery.”

Winry watches Ed’s right hand briefly touch the empty port making up his left shoulder. The soft click of steel against steel is an admission all on its own. He’s only wearing a faded tank top so the new scarring is on full display, raw and pink, licking up his neck and across his collarbone. He’s standing in the doorway to the kitchen, boots on and a frightening calm draped across his shoulders. She keeps expecting him to shout, to crack the wall with his one fist, to tell them both to go to hell as he charges out into the storm and damn the consequences. Ed has always been short-tempered, volatile and furious when the world doesn’t follow his expectations. She’s never been afraid of him before, and there’s no reason to start now… is there?

He’s nodding agreeably to every sharp word Granny snaps at him, and he still insists that he has to go. “You don’t understand,” he says patiently. “If he fell in the river his blood seal in all likelihood has washed away. There’ll just be a suit of armor down in the riverbed.”

“So let the search team find Alphonse’s armor,” Granny says. If anyone’s angry it’s her, glaring up at Ed over her glasses, a screwdriver tightly clenched in one hand. The half-assembled arm on the kitchen table lays forgotten, curls of wire spilled across the pitted wood. Ed’s new left arm. “You’ll only earn yourself a fever if you go out there.”

“I can get over a fever,” he says.

“It’s much too early to put so much strain on your body.”

“You and I both know I can handle it.”

Granny scoffs, throwing down her screwdriver. A few bolts scatter across the floor, but no one makes any move to pick them up. Ed just smiles.

“I’m not asking for a whole arm, Granny. Just enough of one I can clap with.”

Her pipe clicks against her teeth as she purses her mouth, looking like she’s sorely tempted to toss Ed out with nothing but the clothes on his back. Damn the consequences. “Oh? Is that all you’ll be doing? And what about when you do find him? If his seal has washed away, do you intend on cutting off your leg next to bring him back again?”

He shrugs, sheepish. He’s only got the one shoulder, the left port empty and stiff. Funny. Winry can’t find the beauty in the easy motion of his automail. It’s been four months since he came back home with the wrong arm missing, and the absence on his left side still makes her breath catch. “What’s a limb to a life?”

Granny all but snarls at him. “ _Idiot boy!_ You’ve only got the one left!” But then the fury spills out of her in a slow, weary sigh. She touches her hand to her temple, eyes falling shut. “How many more times do you intend to do this?”

“I’ll handle it. Granny, please—”

She smacks her hand on the table, rattling metal plating. Winry jumps despite herself, but Ed doesn’t react at all. “Don’t beg,” Granny spits. “It doesn’t suit you.”

Winry is sitting opposite her at the kitchen table, Ed’s new fingers so many unconnected joints scattered between her hands. They’ve been taking his new arm slow, no need to rush order it because his port still needs time to heal. Slow jobs like this they like to share over cups of coffee, Den napping quietly at their feet. Ed’s been antsy, pushing himself too far too soon with his rehabilitation, but none of them had been surprised. He’d done the same thing with the first two limbs, and he’d been out the door and on his way to Central in a year. Still, even Ed’s not crazy enough to start slinging around a new arm on a new port after four months.

Except he is. He’ll always be that crazy, when Alphonse is in danger.

“Is—” She hesitates when both of them look at her, bites her lip until she can bring herself to ask, “Is Alphonse... dead?”

Ed shakes his head, no harsh snap of denial, no insults, no shouts. Just a calm, frightening certainty. “If his seal has been damaged, then his soul will have returned to his body.”

“But— but that’s good, isn’t it?”

For the first time since Mr. Caddeo knocked on the door and told them Alphonse had fallen into the swollen river, Edward’s face betrays some real emotion beyond this eerie, placid confidence. His mouth parts, his shoulder hunches, his eyes scrunch up. For one brief moment he almost looks like he’s about to cry. But it passes, like ripples in a pond, and that gentle smile returns.

“No, it’s not. The place his body’s at—” He chuckles, softly. His right hand is a fist at his side, gears humming protest. “I don’t think you can call it a real place. To be trapped there, I think…. I think you’d have to go crazy just to cope.”

Winry can’t say anything to that. She looks down at the spilled finger joints, the empty casings, the miniscule screws that will hold his fingers together once she’s put them together. Sheets of rain beat against the house. A hard wind rattles the windows. It’s mid-afternoon and the sky outside is black as coal dust, and Ed wants to charge headlong into the storm.

Ed says, “I can’t leave him there. Not for one second more than I have to.”

Granny’s voice is flinty, unwavering. “I can’t condone this.”

“I’m not asking you to. But I’m going to look for him, with or without your help. You can give me an arm, or I’ll go out there with a shovel.”

She sighs again, shaking her head. Winry watches the slump of her narrow shoulders, the weariness weighing down her small body. Granny’s never looked so old as this. “You’re gonna kill yourself if you keep this up, you know.”

“He’s my brother,” Ed says. “He’s all I’ve got left.”

* * *

The dummy arm barely qualifies as automail, only just complex enough to still hurt when the nerves are connected. Ed grinds his teeth and goes rigid, but doesn’t make a sound. It’s a skeletal thing, cobbled together out of old parts with no external plating to speak of, clusters of wiring carefully pinned away from the joints. It’s only real use is to help Ed adjust to the feel of using a prosthetic, a stepping stone to the arm she hasn’t finished building yet. It doesn’t have much in the way of fine motor control, and lacks pressure plating in the fingertips or palm. Weights can be attached to it to accustom the port to the eventual feel of the real thing. It’s controls are rudimentary at best; the elbow bends fine, but the wrist and shoulders don’t have much range of motion and the fingers tend to react as one. 

It’s not meant to be a stand-in for real automail, just simple exercises. But Ed needs an arm; the dummy will have to do.

Winry walks him through the basic exercises mechanically, feeling like an outsider watching herself talk. “Don’t do anything crazy, okay? The dummy’s not built for your usual stunts. When you find him, you have to let the others do the heavy lifting, okay?”

“I know. Thanks.” He stands up, adjusting to the weight. Even stripped down to bare essentials, it is still heavy. He’s worked up to having it on a few hours at a time each day, but that still left his stump aching, even if he never said it out loud. He rolls the shoulder carefully, the leather support harness across his bare chest creaking.

Granny watches him as he struggles into his tank top again, eyes slitted. “Two hours, Ed. Not a minute more.”

“Right,” he says, walking over to where his red coat is hung up by the front door. He regards it for a few seconds, then gingerly raises both hands to clap. There’s a flash of blue light, and when Winry can see again the coat is hanging differently than before. He takes it down with his right hand and tuts.

“Sloppy,” he mutters, but starts to put it on anyway. Winry quickly steps toward him to help, expecting him to snap at her to quit hovering, almost disappointed when he doesn’t. Once the coat’s on she can see what he did to it. The left sleeve is gone, the fabric added to the rest of the coat so that it hangs more like a half-cape to protect the dummy arm. He lets her do up the top three buttons and smiles at her wordlessly.

This is a bad idea. No stopping it now, though.

“Winry,” Granny says, “Go with him, will you? Try and keep him from doing something stupid.”

“Right.”

It’s a long walk into town proper. By the time they get there Ed’s white-faced and breathing shallowly, and only nods when Winry offers to run into the general store. Someone should be there who will know where along the river Al fell in.

She finds Mr. Ragsdale just outside, a gangly middle-aged man who always smells like sheep no matter how much of Mrs. Karlson’s fancy soaps he uses. He sobers when she catches his attention, the other man he was talking to trotting off into the storm. He crouches slightly to speak without shouting over the hard rattle and patter of rain on the general store’s wooden porch.

“There’s some dozen or so folk out there trying to find a trace of him,” he tells her. “That armor of his must’ve fallen to pieces with how rough the current’s gotten. There’s no telling how far down he’s all gone.”

It’s Resembool’s worst-kept secret, what Ed and Al did. Only Winry and Granny know the full details— and Winry never saw whatever it was they made in their basement, only knows the ashen horror that painted new lines in Granny’s face that never left— but there was no way to hide the truth in such a close-knit village. Al stomping around in the armor, Ed missing two limbs— three now, it’s three now, and soon maybe another, oh Al, please be alive, please—

She takes a shaky breath, paws rain from her eyes, keeps pace with Mr. Ragsdale’s longer strides. 

The only alchemists in Resembool are Ed and Al, and before that their dad, wherever he’d gone off to. No one has the knowledge to look at their crippled bodies and think taboo, but everyone’s heard horror stories about alchemy experiments gone bad. Rebounds, destroying buildings and shredding people to pieces. No one’s ever asked Winry what the boys tried to do; maybe no one wants to know.

As for Ed’s left arm, he’s stuck to the official story Mr. Mustang had spun about a car accident in East City. Everyone in town had shook their heads and tutted, said it was such a shame, what bad luck the Elric brothers have, to have been through so much so young.

Yeah. Bad luck.

Mr. Ragsdale hesitates when he sees Ed, leaning against an unlit house and shaking. He doesn’t look surprised to see Ed, just resigned. “Ho, Ed. Good to see you on your feet.”

“Yeah,” Ed says. “Any sign of Al?”

* * *

Six months after signing off on Edward Elric’s convalescent leave, Colonel Mustang receives a phone call from Resembol.

“Fullmetal,” he says once the operator patches the call through, and watches the head of every other person in the office swivel in his direction. “I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon.”

_“Yeah, well, I figured I owed you a status report.”_

His voice is raspy, worn, perhaps lacking some of its usual ire, but he sounds healthy. He doesn’t sound like someone halfway through exhaustive and painful rehabilitation. Mustang huffs. The idiot owes him a whole lot more than a phone call for not court martialing him into a lifelong imprisonment. “Oh? Good news, I hope.”

Edward chuckles. _“Afraid not. I ran into a minor complication with my rehabilitation. I don’t think it’s any big deal, but I’m not dumb enough to try and tell a couple of lifelong gearheads how to do their job.”_

“What happened?”

“Ah, I couldn’t tell ya for sure. Automail surgery is complex stuff. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around it. I mean, the first two ports went on more or less okay, so you think the third one would too, right? Show’s what I know, though.”

“It isn’t serious, is it?”

_“Nah, I’ll be just fine. It might take me an extra month to report back though, two tops.”_

“Take all the time you need. You’re in the middle of an extensive rehabilitation, after all.”

 _“Eh, it’s nothing I’m not used to.”_ His tone is dismissive, but there’s a slight tremor to his voice, a weakness Edward would never admit to. It’s not enough to comment on, but Mustang’s imagination fills in what Edward refuses to say. Torn muscle and broken ribs, infection and fever, leaking stitches and black-edged burns. Any number of things can go wrong with such dangerous surgery. _“Still, at this rate I think I’m gonna miss my assessment. I’m not sure what to do about that.”_

“It shouldn’t be any trouble, considering your condition.” His mouth twists, the unspoken lie like ash on his tongue. “I’ll submit a waiver on your behalf. You’ll have to worry about it once you’re back on active duty again, but for the time being you can focus on your recovery.”

 _“That’s suspiciously charitable of you,”_ Edward says, wary. _“I kinda expected you to be hounding me for monthly status reports until I came back._ ”

Mustang sighs, hides his face in his free hand. The rough fabric of his ignition glove rasps against his eyelids. “...You lost an _arm._ It would be cruel of me to expect anything more from you.”

_“...Right.”_

Mustang sighs, dropping his hand. His team is still listening attentively, though they’re at least trying to be discrete about it. “Is there anything else?”

_“I… yeah, actually. If you see Alphonse around, you mind letting me know?”_

“Alphonse?” He echoes, surprised. “He left?”

Edward makes a noncommittal noise, a grumble that lacks teeth. _“I pissed him off, and he decided to do some research on his own. I don’t blame him, ‘cuz I’m wasting valuable time here recuperating, but I’m worried about him.”_

“I think a capable alchemist in an eight-foot tall suit of armor can handle a little research—”

 _“You KNOW what I mean, Colonel!”_ Edward snarls, and the anger in his voice is—not a surprise, no. Anger is Edward’s knee jerk reaction, or at least an emotion he has the easiest time showing. Mustang had expected a retort, but not one with so much venom. Edward’s breath catches, a sharp inhale hissed through his teeth.

“Fullmetal?”

 _“...I’m fine.”_ He almost sounds it too, but that tremor in his voice is stronger than he can stifle. _“It’s just…. Al can be as reckless as me when he gets an idea in his head. He’s not invulnerable. I’m his big brother. It’s my job, to make sure he’s okay.”_

A job that’s taken both of his arms from him, and Edward made it explicitly clear before he left for Resembol how much more he’s willing to give to keep Alphonse tethered to that armor. 

Not for the first time, Mustang’s imagination gets the better of him. He pictures a boy more automail than flesh before his eighteenth birthday, blind and deaf, perhaps mute as well. Stolidly painting the blood seal anew with an unfeeling finger, forced to rely on past experience rather than sight or touch to know he’s done it right. Willing to trade every spare part of himself to bring his brother’s soul back again and again, loss calculated down to the number of ribs he can afford to replace with steel struts. Organs, too. Who even needs two kidneys? Two lungs? Halve the liver, two or three meters of the small intestine. The skin is an organ too, and he’d have plenty to spare on his torso. Fractioning himself away, leaving Alphonse to do the legwork when his piecemeal body can no longer support the metal that’s left of him. 

Fullmetal. What a cruel sense of humor the Fuhrer had.

Mustang shudders, hunched behind his broad desk stacked with paperwork that seems so meaningless compared to Edward’s dedication, compared to Edward’s sacrifice. Lieutenant Hawkeye and the others have given up any pretense of busywork, watching him with furrowed brows and grim mouths.

This isn’t sustainable. This isn’t _sane_.

...But it isn’t his place to say as much. He’s Fullmetal’s superior officer, not his guardian. So long as Fullmetal is physically fit for duty, there’s nothing for it. Suggesting a psychological evaluation, suggesting that something beyond bad luck and an overactive willingness to throw himself into danger to protect others might be behind Fullmetal’s two— and soon to be three— prosthetics, would condemn them both.

_“Colonel?”_

He’s gone too long without answering. “I understand,” he says, mustering as even a tone as he can. “I’ll keep an eye out for him. In the meantime don’t overdo it, and I expect a status report on your recovery next month.”

_“Augh, seriously?”_

“It was your idea.”

_“Me and my big mouth. Fine, fine, you’ll get your report. Just make sure you let me know first thing if you hear from Alphonse, okay?”_

“Of course.”

 _“All right, thanks. I—”_ A muffled voice on his end interrupts him, too indistinct to make any words out. _“Ah, okay, Granny. Look Colonel, I gotta go.”_ The line clicks dead before Mustang can reply.

When he hangs up the receiver, the silence in the office is like a physical weight pressed to his chest and bowing his shoulders. All of his subordinates are sat stiffly at their desks, waiting.

Lieutenant Breda is the first to speak.

“How’s the Boss doin’?” He asks, hesitant. Mustang knits his fingers together, rests his hands on desk to steady himself. He’s careful not to rub the fabric too roughly, leery of making any sparks. With his focus a scattered mess now, it would be all too easy to accidentally start a fire.

“More or less as well as can be expected,” he replies. “He called to inform me of a delay to his estimated return date. It seems he’s run into a minor setback with his outfitting.”

Sergeant Fuery leans forward, alarm in his expression. “Did he say what went wrong?”

Mustang can’t help but smile wryly at that. “Does he ever?”

“How long does he expect to be delayed?” Lieutenant Hawkeye asks.

“A month, two at the most.”

Warrant Officer Falman shakes his head, disbelieving. “I can’t believe how tenacious Edward is.”

“You’ve _met_ him, right?” Lieutenant Havoc asks, laughing.

“No, I know. I just meant how incredible it is how quickly he intends to return to active duty after being outfitted with a new automail arm.”

“What d’you mean?” Breda asks. 

Falman shifts nervously when he realizes the whole office has their eyes on him. “Ah, well. When I first heard about his automail I was curious, so I did some reading on the topic.” Mustang stifles a smile at that; Falman’s curiosity paired with his near-perfect photographic memory are both excellent qualities in a soldier. He’s saved untold hours of work. “There’s a good reason it’s still pretty rare to see automail in the military, and even then it’s usually people who were outfitted before they joined. The average rehabilitation time for a full arm replacement is two years, and that's for an adult. He's going to be [unfinished]”

Havoc stubs out the butt of his cigarette and draws a new one out of the crumpled packet on his desk. “If he says he can do it in a year, he’ll do it in a year. He’d know best, right? Since he’s already been through this before.”

“And that was an arm and a leg,” Fuery adds. “Not just an arm like it is now.”

“Almost surprised he’s not tryin’ to come back in half the time,” Breda says. “The Boss doesn’t know how to sit down and take it easy though. Guess he must be having a harder time of it than he’d ever let on, huh?”

Mustang hums, picking up his pen again. That’s certainly Fullmetal’s way, to play things close to his chest, to shoulder his burdens so no one else can be bothered by them. It’s a surprising display of maturity, for a boy only 14 years old. 

Only 14 years old, and he’s lost— traded away— three of his limbs. 

“Colonel?” Hawkeye’s tone is all calm, professional interest. “You’re certain Edward is all right?”

Of course. She was there, when Fullmetal committed the taboo in the hospital parking lot. She saw his arm peel away in a burst of alchemical light, saw the blood and heard his screams firsthand. In six months she’s never yet said as much to him, but Mustang doesn’t doubt that she blames herself, for not realizing what Fullmetal intended to do to bring Alphonse back again.

“He’ll be causing trouble again in no time,” Mustang replies. That, at least, is a certainty. 

* * *

Two days later Alphonse arrives at Eastern HQ. Without Fullmetal he isn't allowed access to the base, so the gate guards call Colonel Mustang’s office and Sergeant Fuery offers to sign him in. When they both enter the office there’s a chorus of greetings; despite his intimidating appearance Alphonse has endeared himself to the soldiers with his soft-spoken insight and razor intelligence. Those long debriefings Fullmetal had with the brass gave the younger Elric plenty of opportunities to rub elbows with enlisted and commissioned alike.

Alphonse shuffles by the doorway, embarrassed enough to duck his helmet sheepishly. “Ah, thank you, everyone. It's good to see you all again.”

“It’s been too quiet around here without you and your brother raising hell every couple of weeks!” Havoc says, and he and Breda laugh loudly.

“Oh, yeah. I guess it’s been awhile, hasn’t it?” Alphonse clasps his hands at his waist, looking across the office to meet Mustang’s eyes.

“What brings you to HQ?” Falman asks.

“I’m not staying long. I know it isn’t really right for me to be here without Ed—” His voice catches, his hands wringing. Mustang frowns. Something isn’t right.

“You’ll always be welcome here,” Hawkeye says, reaching out to pat his arm.

“I— thank you, but—” He pulls away, his backplate bumping against the closed door. “—I just wanted to make sure you all knew about Brother, before I left.”

“He called,” Mustang says from his desk, and doesn’t miss the way Alphonse’s pauldrons jerk in surprise. “Just the other day.”

“He did? Really?” At his nod Alphonse hesitates, helmet spanning the room again. “...I see. Then I owe you all another apology.”

“An apology?” Fuery echoes. “What for?”

His helmet ducks again, his spiked pauldrons hunching as his leather hands fall to his sides. “It’s my fault,” Alphonse whispers, his child’s voice cracking. “It was all my fault. I was stupid, I was careless, if I’d just paid better attention it wouldn’t have happened and Brother wouldn’t— he wouldn’t—”

“ _Alphonse_ ,” Mustang calls out sharply, and the boy flinches, falling silent. He gets to his feet and closes the distance between them, his subordinates parting uncertainly to let him through. “What happened? What’s wrong?”

The pale lights in Alphonse’s helmet flicker. “...What did he tell you?”

A chill runs through Mustang, a cold dread ghosted down his skin. No. Let him be wrong. Let him be wrong. “Fullmetal said there had been some complication with his port,” he replies slowly. “He informed me that his estimated return date would need to be pushed back two months.”

“ _Two—!_ ” Alphonse breaks off, his gloves tightly fisted. “Of course he didn’t tell you. That _idiot!_ ”

Mustang’s throat is dry, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth, his lips reluctant to part. Let him be wrong. “What happened.”

Alphonse’s anger bleeds away as quickly as it had come. His voice is barely more than a whisper; dull, without inflection. “There… there was a flood. The spring thaws are always bad, but this year was worse. Half the village might have gotten washed away if I hadn’t gone to help. It shouldn’t have been any trouble, but I— I lost my footing. It’s hard, sometimes, to tell where I am. To be sure of my footing. I fell into the river, and got pulled under. The last thing I remember is being dragged across the river bottom, before my blood seal…”

He shudders, his overlapping plates clanking. “It was almost two weeks before they found my armor. Brother, he— he didn’t hesitate. He pulled me back again.”

 _Again_.

There is a long, awful silence. The gravity of Alphonse’s hushed account sinking in, horror growing on everyone’s faces. Breda, Havoc, Fuery, Falman, and Hawkeye have all known the Elrics for years. They’ve known the truth behind Fullmetal’s automail and Alphonse’s armor. They’ve all grown to care for the boys, in their own ways. Every one of them had been stricken six months ago, when they’d seen what Fullmetal had done to himself to save Alphonse. And here they’re gathered, hearing it all over again.

“What….” Hawkeye swallows, looking away. “What was taken from him?”

The lights in Alphonse’s helmet have all but gone out. “...His leg. It took his leg.”

* * *

13 months after he’d walked out of Mustang’s office with a bandaged stump where his left arm had been, Fullmetal returns.

The worst part is, at first glance Mustang can’t tell anything’s different.

Fullmetal strides in like he owns the place, hands in his pockets, a bored expression like he’s already itching to stride right out again. He’s grown, a little taller and a little filled out. There’s a maturity to his face, a strength to his jaw and a new focus to his eyes. When he turns to shut the office door Mustang catches a glimpse of his braid stretching halfway down his back. Red coat, black jacket and pants, white gloves. It’s almost like nothing’s changed at all.

“Miss me?” Fullmetal asks, grinning [unfinished]

* * *

“He's trying to protect you from your own fanaticism!”

(Phone rings, Mustang makes to answer it, Edward smashes it. On his way out pauses to put shoes on [uh…. I think I was going to have Mustang demand Ed to show his feet when he tried to lie about the leg? I honestly don’t remember.]

“Fullmetal! Fix my phone!”

Derisive, “Are you an alchemist or not? Fix it yourself.”)

* * *

_[super_ roughed here. Was going to have Ed bail East City pretty quick, try poking around Central for any sign of Al before resigning himself to Izumi’s fury in the hopes he’d find Al there. Imagine his surprise when she knows what the automail means, whoops.]

When Izumi kicks his ass across the yard she notes something is off at once. Edward's too heavy for his size, the thud of his limbs against the dirt too pronounced. She flips him again for good measure, feels how unyielding his arm is in her hands. Assumes two limbs are prosthetic, furious he was foolish enough to be hurt so badly since the last time she saw him. Transmutes a spear and demands he defends himself. Short one-sided fight as Edward doesn't want to spar against her, ends up blocking a slice with one arm, she sweeps his feet out from under him and puts the blade to his neck.

“How shameful! And where's your brother? Is he in as sorry a state as you?”

“I don't know! He ran off six months ago! I was hoping he'd be here.”

“I haven't seen him.”

“Damn it!”

Claps his hands, transmutes a blade and cuts her spear. Of course she knows what that means. “Idiot boy! Do you have even one limb left to call your own!”

On his knees he flinches. “No!”

“...That thing took so much from you?”

He realizes she's done it too. Bows his head, unable to meet her eyes. “No. The first time, it only took one of my legs.”


End file.
